Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Many long-established MMORPG titles have gone the way of the free-to-play model, and it looks like that time has come for GameLoft’s Order and Chaos too, one of the most comprehensive mobile MMO RPGs.

The game has been moving in the FTP direction for a while, the first move in this respect having been made in 2012, when the monthly subscription fee model got tossed in the bin in favor of a single upfront payment of $6.99, which covered all the available in-game content. That price then got dropped to $0.99 and it then got scrapped completely, so the game is now essentially available for free.

Some of the players who purchased the game not long before the move to free-to-play, got compensated in-game through a number of free runes and a pet or two tossed in for seasoning, but obviously, those who have been playing for years haven’t earned any sort of such “compensation”.

Everything accounted for, there’s just one major question remaining in regards to the new Order and Chaos “equation”: how is GameLoft going to make money with it? While there has been an in-game purchases system implemented, there has never been much of a focus on it. The items players can purchase for real currency have never been essential for the experience offered by the game.

Apparently though, the move to FTP was celebrated with a 50% off on rune purchases and – as said above – some players got compensated in runes for their late real money purchases, all moves possibly aimed at getting them used to spending some real money currency on virtual content here and there. An in-game shop sale has been launched as well, so things do indeed seem to be adding up in this respect.

With the update that introduced the above-said in-game purchase enticements, several other interesting twists came as well: new equipment has been added, players can now join leagues and there’s an exciting new PvP battlefield.